Santa Maria, Here I Come!

So far in my flight training, I have not flown outside of the Los Angeles area. The farthest north I've gone is Magic Mountain in Velencia, CA, and the farthest south I've been is the south downwind leg of the Santa Monica airport traffic pattern. Well that is about to change. Tomorrow, I expand my territory to...Santa Maria!

The distance from Santa Monica to Santa Maria is 114 nautical miles. The flight should take about 90 minutes, and I'm going with my instructor. If everything goes well, I will be making the same flight on Sunday—by myself. Sweet.

See you in SMX!

My First Solo

I have a new decoration for my office wall:

As I promised in my last entry, I flew the airplane solo! Last Friday we had a temporary break in the cloudy weather, so I rushed down to the airport on my lunch break (about a 15 minute drive). First I went up with my instructor, executed two unassisted landings and taxiied back to the ramp. Then my instructor got out of the plane, wished me good luck, and I was on my own. I taxiied the airplane back to the runway and let the tower know that I was a student pilot doing my first solo. As soon as I was cleared, I took off!

I was far too focused to be very excited at this point. All that was in my head were the things I needed to do: keep the wings level, fly runway heading and climb at 80MPH. At the end of the runway, turn left and overfly the golf course for noise abatement.

I'm so used to having an instructor in the right seat that as soon as I leveled off at the pattern altitude and had a moment to take a breath, the quiet in the cockpit got to me and I actually felt a bit lonely.

That passed very quickly and was replaced by, holy cow, this is not Microsoft Flight Simulator. I am flying an actual freaking airplane in the actual sky (really!), which was quite clear and beautiful that day.

As soon as I reached a point towards the end of my downwind leg, tower cleared me to land and I began my descent. Now I was back to being extremely focused: flaps, speed at 85, descend at 500 fpm, glide, break the glide, flare, touchdown.

Back to the ramp. I marked my logbook: 0.7 hours dual instruction, 0.3 hours solo. I returned to work that afternoon with a huge grin on my face.

Weather

As I write this, I am staring at two new endorsements in my log book: certification of pre-solo flight training and pre-solo aeronautical knowledge.

This means that at 13.2 hours and 50 take-offs and landings, I am now signed off to take the plane up by myself! I haven't done this yet, though, due to weather.

The past week or so, Santa Monica has been experiencing a very annoying, persistent marine layer. We're used to low clouds and fog in the mornings, but lately these conditions have been lasting all day, which means no flying for me.

Obviously clouds are no factor for commercial airliners, so you might wonder why they are such a big deal for me. The answer is that all of my training flights are done under "visual flight rules." Visual flight rules (VFR) means that it is my job to "see and avoid" other aircraft. Air traffic control will help when they can, but ultimately it is up to me. If I am flying through a cloud, I am blind, and that is bad.

Later on, after I get my pilot's license and have at least 50 hours of experience, I can get an "instrument rating" that allows me to fly in the clouds under certain conditions. Yes, I do plan to get this. But until then, I'll be staying at least 500' below, 1,000' above, and 2,000' horizontally away from any clouds.

Plane Watching

Recently I went after work to the airport to eat dinner at Typhoon, the pan-asian restaurant whose dining room has a great view of the runway. While I was there, I got to see this beautiful plane take off:

photo by Kai Engstroem, used with permission.

He used about 500 feet of runway to take off and shot straight up into the air. He must have been climbing at least 1,500 feet per minute. Very cool! I also decided that the Learjet is my favorite business jet:

photo by Andre Wadman, used with permission.

I'm not basing that on anything other than looks. I just love that sleek nose, the blended winglets and those cool-looking, downward-facing stabilizer things on the tail. Everything about this plane makes me swoon. Now I just need to find a rich uncle...

* Both photos courtesy of airliners.net, used with permission.

Landing: Check.

I had a GREAT lesson this morning! We did nine landings, eight of which were completely unassisted, and they were all pretty fantastic. In the one that was assisted, I came in too high and attempted a "slip" to lose altitude*. I screwed up the slip maneuver, ended up off track, and my instructor had to help me out with some right rudder.

We also tried one landing with no flaps, just to see what it felt like. The result of that was we landed at 90 miles-per-hour instead of 80 and rolled down the runway about twice the distance we usually do.

I now have "landing" checked off on my pre-solo checklist. I believe the only things I have left to do are slow flight and emergency procedures, and then I'm going solo. Wish me luck!

* A slip is when I bank the airplane to one side, as if I was going to turn, but I use full, opposite rudder input to keep the plane on the same track. The result is that the nose stays pointed toward the runway, but one wing will be lower than the other, and the resulting drag from the full rudder deflection slows the airplane down considerably.